


your voice is the sound of sirens (to a house on fire)

by hypernomad



Series: Character Studies [2]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 00:22:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3337589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypernomad/pseuds/hypernomad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian learns how to read; he never really learns how to stop.</p><p>When he’s six, he reads Alice in Wonderland and wonders, vaguely, if Lewis Carroll was actually predicting the life of a certain freckled redhead in Chicago with an alcoholic father and an erratic mother. It certainly seems that way at times. His life is a psychedelic mess of being left at the roadside with his brother and sisters, being “given” to random women in the street by his stoned mother, and blinking ash out of his eyes after his father drunkenly throws an ashtray at him for looking like his uncle.</p><p>The thought is fleeting and he shakes it away as quickly as it comes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your voice is the sound of sirens (to a house on fire)

**Author's Note:**

> A few months ago I wrote a Mickey study fic, from pre-S1 up until he goes to juvie at the end of S1. So, as a companion piece, I wrote an Ian-centric study fic during the same period. It's a bit longer since Ian has more screen time in S1 and there's a bit more to cover, but I hope you like it anyway!

Ian learns how to read; he never really learns how to stop.

When he’s six, he reads _Alice in Wonderland_ and wonders, vaguely, if Lewis Carroll was actually predicting the life of a certain freckled redhead in Chicago with an alcoholic father and an erratic mother. It certainly seems that way at times. His life is a psychedelic mess of being left at the roadside with his brother and sisters, being “given” to random women in the street by his stoned mother, and blinking ash out of his eyes after his father drunkenly throws an ashtray at him for looking like his uncle.

The thought is fleeting and he shakes it away as quickly as it comes.

Fiona asks him what he wants for his birthday and he asks her to take him to the library because he knows they don’t have the money to buy books. He stands on the back of her stolen bike while she cycles through the backstreets between people’s yards at break-neck speed, the both of them laughing while the wind rushes through them. Ian clings on to his sister’s sweater and spits her brown hair out of his grinning mouth. He thinks that if he lets go, he’d fly away.

When they get to the library, Fiona signs them both up for library cards and Ian picks out _Treasure Island, Oliver Twist, Grimm’s Fairytales, The Jungle Book,_ and a couple of _Dragonball Z_ books. After an hour, Fiona has to come and practically drag him away from his little corner in the children’s section (which he’d nearly completely ignored) so she can get home and start making dinner.

The librarian gives him a funny look when he piles up his books for her to check out, as if she doesn’t believe he’ll be able to read them at his age. Fiona glares at her but doesn’t say anything. She just packs their books into her satchel and Ian’s red backpack and then leaves with a humourless smile. She doesn’t cycle quite as fast back home. When they get there, Debbie is crying in her crib while Monica and Frank are screaming at each other outside. Lip has a bloody nose and is trying to hide a cake with blue frosting when they walk through the back door, and Ian almost doesn’t blame Fiona for taking her time on their way home.

A while later, when the cake with seven candles has made its reappearance and Fiona deliberately hasn’t made dinner for Frank or Monica, Lip hands him a badly-wrapped parcel with a box of army men and VCR of _Akira_ in it. Fiona gives him a blue parcel with two checked shirts she’d bought at a thrift store in it. Then, she hands him a frayed, used copy of the first _Harry Potter_ book from inside her sweater’s front pocket.

“I got it today at the library, sorry it’s not wrapped.” She says a little awkwardly. “They were selling it ‘cause a few of the pages are falling out, but it should be fine.”

“It’s great, thanks.” Ian says over the sound of Frank screaming obscenities right outside the window.

Lip pats him on the shoulder and Fiona ruffles his hair right before they hear Monica shout: _“Because I’m pregnant, you ungrateful piece of shit!”_

Everything gets kind of crazy after that.

*

At first, Ian had been a pretty temperamental kid. Fiona says that Monica quickly gave up trying to comfort him when he got upset, because he would take temper tantrums to a whole new level and then _she_ would start crying. He would scream for hours, he would bang his head on the floor or the wall, break his things and his forehead would become red and blotchy. It had scared the shit out of everyone at first since Ian was pretty much the quietest kid. Fiona was always arguing with their parents (Ian would think in later life that this was Fiona’s way of letting out her anger at having to play the mother before she finally accepted her fate). Lip was active and precocious which, growing up in their house, meant he learnt fairly quickly to be an insolent little bastard who didn’t know when to shut his mouth. Debbie was frequently sick, anxious and a bit hyperactive, and it was clear that Carl’s constant misbehaviour was going to be a major problem. Liam was colicky for most of his first year and like Debbie, caught seemingly every infection or illness that was going around. Ian was different, though. He was quiet, studious, and for the most part did not naturally deal well with the loudness or the abrasiveness of his family; he would usually play by himself or take care of his younger siblings.

When Ian would get upset though, it was a different story. Nobody ever knew how to comfort him. He would get upset and the whole street would know about it. He would literally make himself sick and even injure himself, until in the end he would be left to calm down, alone. Soon, it seemed that being alone was a pretty good remedy. It gave him time to think.

The problem for Ian is that there’s such a thing as being alone for _too_ long. It’s strange for him to think that he can feel alone in a family of so many people, with so many other people coming and going, with so many people around to talk (or argue) with. Nonetheless, it’s there he often finds himself: alone in his room and thinking by himself, sometimes reading his books by the lamp light or just daydreaming about West Point. Books feed him; he feels focussed and engaged by them and like he’s not the only one who has these strange, deep thoughts.

As he grows, he finds harder to find his way out of the labyrinth of his own mind. He doesn’t know when he became so introverted, but eventually, his tantrums stop. He stops telling other people what’s going on in his head. He doesn’t burden them with it at all because everybody’s hurt in his family—nobody ever stops licking their wounds or giving each other fresh ones. He’s no different to them, really. He can’t be selfish; he just has to be strong. He just has to survive and manage things as they come.

This is never more apparent than it is when they wake up one day and Monica is gone; just a tear-stained letter on the kitchen table left in her wake. The inky grey blotches on the paper don’t make it sting any less. Fiona comforts Debbie, Liam and Carl, Frank goes on a bender, and Lip disappears for the rest of the day. Ian stays in his room and finishes all of his homework.

At school, things are hard, but he survives. His neighbourhood is a shitty one and the kids at school aren’t much better than their parents for the most part. Ian doesn’t integrate easily into middle school. He goes through a rather sudden growth spurt during the summer: his teeth still look a little too big for his head and his limbs are all long and gangly, so Fiona has to fork out for more clothes since Lip was never as tall as he now is. They’re second hand and the fibres irritate his Eczema, but they’re warm and they fit, which is better than wearing Frank’s blood and puke stained clothes.

There’s something about the guys which confuses him for some time. He can’t put his finger on it, but he feels strange about the way they look. The girls don’t interest him at all – they’re dressed way too old for their small bodies and slathered in make-up. He really doesn’t understand why so many of the older boys (and teachers) are so fascinated by them. To him, there’s something wholly unpleasant about the idea of touching girls sexually. He pretends to be into it because he’s not an idiot, but he always makes sure to do something to piss them off when they start getting too close. It usually works pretty well and people leave him alone.

There’s this one kid though, Kaminsky. Oddly, Ian doesn’t remember his first name, because he’s sure it’s something weird like Axl or Ace or some shit. He doesn’t leave him alone for the whole first semester. He hears _faggot, queer, homo_ when Kaminsky barrels into him in the halls, shoves him into a locker or tosses plastic cups of water at him in the cafeteria while his gang of white trash losers laugh like horses.

He doesn’t tell Lip about it. He’s terrified that somehow Lip will work out that it might be true. He’s not sure if he’s more afraid of Lip knowing it’s true than he is of acknowledging it to himself.

So he takes control of the situation. One Wednesday afternoon, when Kaminsky is yelling verbal abuse at him in the hallway while they wait outside their locked English classroom for their teacher to arrive, he turns to him, grabs him by the scruff of his shirt and punches him hard in the stomach. Kaminsky doubles over and chokes out a gasp, and Ian grabs a handful of his brown hair to slam his knee into his face. In the space of a few seconds, Kaminsky has gone from a snotty, arrogant little fuck to a snivelling, crying, bloody-faced mess on the floor.

Ian is grabbed by a passing teacher and gets sent to the principal’s office. On his way there, he’s almost knocked over by Mr. Martinez bowling out of his classroom. His entire bald head and face are shining with sweat while he growls and spits out reprimands at a grinning black-haired boy who he has by the scruff of his filthy shirt. Ian instantly recognises him by his knuckle tattoos and the loud curses coming out of his mouth as his underdeveloped body is lifted almost right off the floor. Something flutters in his chest when Mickey’s ice blue eyes catch his, but he stamps it down with all the other feelings like that and walks faster to the principal’s office.

When he gets there, Lip is sitting on the chairs outside and fiddling with an unlit cigarette.

“Welcome to the dark side, little brother.” Lip says with a proud smirk.

“Did I ever leave?” Ian replies, grinning proudly and sitting down next to him. Lip laughs and hands him the cigarette.

Ian learns that taking control—doing things for himself, _by_ himself, not only benefits his family. It empowers him. It gives him something that’s _his_ – not Lip’s, not Fiona’s, Debbie’s, Liam’s or Carl’s, or something that can be stolen by Frank. It’s all his to own and control.

That summer, he’s at some shitty arcade and Lip has left him alone to fuck some girl he’s been after for weeks. When Axl Kaminsky follows him into the mens’ room, Ian doesn’t hesitate to kiss him back.

*

He flourishes when he discovers the army. His mind works well when he’s strategising; manipulating the shoplifted army men Lip gave him like pieces on a chess board in his free time and learning how to command a platoon. He wants to be an Officer and dreams of doing it for real; having his men look up to him, becoming a war hero, having medals pinned to his chest, Fiona and his siblings looking on proudly as he drags them out of the perpetual train wreck they live in. When he joins ROTC, he discovers what it’s like to fire a gun with precision and skill. He builds his body up and learns how to disarm people and use their strengths against them. He only wishes he knew how to do that in every situation.

One day at target practice, he hits every mark on the target. His instructor is so impressed that he actually compliments him on his aim and pats him on the shoulder while telling him he’d make a damn fine sniper.

His usually stoic instructor is probably in his mid-thirties, black-haired, perfectly built and over six feet tall, and Ian feels his pants tighten at the compliment. He tries to push the feeling down and grinds out a “thank you, sir”.

Try though he does, he can’t put the incident out of his mind. He jerks off every night to the thought of fucking his instructor for nearly two whole weeks and slowly realises how fucked he is in the head. Still, he can’t stop thinking about it. Sometimes the figure in his mind isn’t his instructor at ROTC. Sometimes it’s the hot substitute teacher who liked the poem he wrote and read out in English. Sometimes it’s the young office worker who was eyeing him on the L when he was wearing his ROTC uniform.

One time, it’s Mickey Milkovich. Ian had seen him making a drug deal (or maybe it was actually one of the Milkovich’s infamous late payment beat-downs; it certainly seemed like it) beneath a tree not far behind the bike shelter. He’d bent over to hiss something venomous to the cowering boy and Ian couldn’t help but admire the older boy’s ass a little more than he probably should have. As Mickey’s older brother had glanced up at him, Ian’s head had jerked back down to the floor so quickly his neck clicked painfully, and with his face red and flushed, he’d walked to his Chemistry class just a bit faster.

He has a slight chafe burn on his hand the next day and he has to punch Lip in the kidney to get him to stop teasing him.

After that, he can’t take it anymore. A month or so after the shooting range incident, he seeks out a boy whom he knows (or who at least seems) to have the same inclinations as him. Roger Spikey is a senior. He’s headed for college on a football scholarship and, Ian finds, having pressed him up against the shower wall one day after the bell had rung, the nickname “Donkey-Dick” is not just for show.

Somehow, it gets out that Ian Gallagher is a ‘ _faggot’_. Ian has no idea how it happens, but the taunting and the name calling don’t relent for weeks. One day, Roger Spikey shoves him while he’s walking down the hallway, flanked by a pair of assholes who laugh as he stumbles into a locker.

Ian manages to convince Lip that it was just made up by Stacey Castro because he turned her down. When Lip furrows his brow and asks why, he makes a joke about her having halitosis you could smell from the moon, and his brother shrugs and promises to headbutt the next asshole who decides to make a comment like that about his little brother in his presence. Ian laughs, but secretly he feels a swell of love for his brother and his rare moments of knowing when to shut the fuck up.

Gradually, though, he learns that keeping a secret corrodes everything the longer you keep it.

The first time they meet, Kash Karib is oddly cheerful considering that Ian has to wait nearly five minutes for his wife to stop screaming at him to be served. When she finally leaves, he dumps the diapers, eggs, and Sunny D he’s carrying onto the counter and gives him an awkward smile.

When he’s finished ringing up the till and bagging Ian’s stuff, he gives him a look that’s hard for Ian to interpret. “What?” He says finally, shoving his wallet into his back pocket.

“There’s a back room.” Kash finally says, a smirk slowly spreading across his face.

It takes a moment to register, and Ian glances around the store briefly. “You’re kidding, right?” He says, his voice quiet. “Your wife is right upstairs.”

“She won’t hear anything, I promise.” Kash replies.

“…And you’re open for another two hours. What are you going to do, close the store? Won’t she be able to see?” He asks, pointing to the security camera right above their heads and looking slightly panicked. “Can she hear us?”

“Do you think I have a death-wish? Look, this is just between you and me, but the security cameras don’t work. They haven’t for years.”

Ian is staring at him, brows furrowed. “How old are you?”

“Does it matter?” Kash asks, standing and rounding the counter with a quick glance over his shoulder. His hand comes up and his fingers brush Ian’s chin gently, a small, nervous smile on his face. “Look, you do this for me, and I’ll give you a job. Afternoons after school and every Saturday morning.”

“I have ROTC. And study groups.” Ian jerks his face away from Kash’s hand and walks around him, heading for the door.

“Eight dollars an hour plus overtime, if you want it.”

“Don’t you have to ask your wife first?” Ian asks, opening the door slightly. “It kind of seems like she’s the one running the show.”

Kash looks a little desperate, but he’s trying not to show it. He steps closer. “I’ll talk it over with her. She’ll be fine with it. She wants me to take better care of my parents and go to the Mosque more often anyway. I’ll tell her I need someone to watch the store while I’m gone. Do you want the job or not?”

“Depends. Do I have to keep fucking you for it while I work here?”

“Not if you don’t want to. It’s just… it’s been a while, is all.” Kash looks nervous, but he’s trying to hide it to seem more attractive or something.

Ian is silent. Then, finally, he lets go of the door and storms past the older man, sighing in annoyance and pulling his coat from his shoulders. Kash follows with an excited grin.

*

Contrary to what Ian initially thought – that Kash Karib is just another sleazy perv who cheats on his wife with teenage boys – he actually doesn’t mind working with him so much.

Of course, the Sox tickets, the new coat and the sneakers have improved his opinion of him somewhat. The sex carries on, as Ian expected, at Kash’s repeated advances, even though he didn’t really want it to. But he reprimands himself for complaining about it – most guys would kill to be able to get a fuck whenever they wanted it at work. Ian’s just not so sure he feels the same.

Nevertheless, he keeps their arrangement quiet – if it gets out and Kash is arrested, Linda will probably never be able to keep the store open in their neighbourhood of delinquents, lowlifes and neo-Nazis, and then Ian won’t be able to keep his job, and they _really_ need to pay the heating bill this Winter. Last year had been the worst – Fiona had been arranging to cover her friend’s shifts for a couple of months while she went on maternity, but said friend had miscarried pretty badly and had needed the money to cover the medical bills. They’d scraped together the money for rent, food and some of the basics, but they’d not had enough for the heating. Ian had woken up every day to Carl sleeping at the other end of his bed with Liam under one arm.

He starts to like spending time with Kash after a while though, and work becomes more than just tolerable. One day, Kash is in a rush to leave because his mother slipped in the shower and fucked up her hip replacement and Linda has called him from the hospital about six times in the last hour and why isn’t he picking up his goddamn phone—Ian doesn’t hear all of it, but it sounds urgent.

On his way out, Kash kisses him on the mouth and says he’s sorry, he’ll make it up to him, and Ian doesn't wipe his mouth afterward.

He puts off his chemistry homework to make a CD of his favourite music for Kash to listen to that night. He’s so nervous he doesn’t give it to him until the next week.

It carries on this way for a few months. Kash buys him things. Ian uses whatever leftover cash he has to buy or make something for him. The sex gets more intimate. It’s the best Ian’s life has been for a long time. Thanks to his job, they’re able to afford most of their “luxuries” – none of which are actually luxuries at all of course. He gets help with his homework, he gets laid pretty often, and there’s someone he can go to when Frank fucks up their steady peace or when he and Lip have a fight. So he tries not to feel guilty for keeping a few extra bucks here or there to spend on his boyfriend.

It’s not perfect though. He knows that Kash doesn’t love his wife, and he knows that it’s only carrying on because Kash has two kids that he loves and his parents would kill him if they found out the truth. He has this aching soft spot inside him that makes him feel dirty and ashamed for what he’s doing and in some ways he hates Kash for being such a coward, but he loves feeling needed and wanted. Nobody ever needs or wants him for any other reason than because he brings money in. Kash sees his worth. He’s proud of him when he gets promoted in ROTC. He’s there for him when he’s upset. He understands him and his body.

In retrospect, Ian can probably pinpoint the exact moment things start to go wrong.

It starts with Lip finding his porn.

As if that’s not humiliating enough, it’s followed by a series of weird conversion therapy type responses from his brother, including the rather traumatic experience of being blown by Karen Jackson under her dining room table. It’s impossible for him to even get hard and he doesn’t appreciate being chased by her weird, Bible-thumping father out of the house while he screams scripture at them when he works out what’s going on, either.

He hates that he didn’t get to come out to his brother on his own terms. Out of all his siblings, it’s his opinion that matters the most to him. He and Lip are the closest in age and they’ve always had a tight bond. It’s also because he knows that Lip, like most of the men in his neighbourhood, is pretty homophobic. It doesn’t entirely change when he’s outed; he’s still a dick about it if his attempts at getting Ian to “try” girls are anything to go by. Amongst his annoyance and frustration, Ian can’t help but feel a little smug about his brother’s ignorance. Clearly he’s not that smart after all.

Nonetheless, Lip seems to eventually make his peace with it, and for a short while, things are fine.

That is, until he and Kash fuck up and step out of the back room wearing odd shoes when Lip arrives to return his power tools.

Ian’s afraid to return home that night. He feels the dread and the fear settling in his gut as Kash paces across the floor, running his hands through his hair and trying to keep the tears back.

“Shit, Ian,” Kash breathes, “shit, shit, shit, shit—“ He’s breathing harshly as he leans on the counter.

Ian places a hand on his shoulder. “Okay, Kash, breathe. I’ll talk to my brother, alright? It’s okay—“

“It’s not fucking okay, Ian!” He says, jerking away from Ian’s touch. Ian is taken aback. “I’m so fucked! I’m going to go to jail, I’m going to be humiliated—“

“You won’t go to jail!” Ian says desperately. “I won’t testify! I’ll refuse!”

“It doesn’t work like that, Ian, especially not for guys like me.” Kash breathes and puts his face in his hands. “I’m so fucked…”

It carries on that way for a while, until Ian gets too pissed off to keep talking to him and decides to leave. He doesn’t go home right away; instead, he heads to the baseball field for a while. He’s got Sonic Youth playing on the old MP3 player Kash gave him, and it calms him down for a while. When he gets to the dugout, he takes one earphone out and rummages around through his backpack. He finds the small baggie with his nearly-spent joint in it and he leans his head back against the wall after he lights it.

The smoke fills his lungs mercifully and he only gets a couple of good drags before it’s gone, but it does the trick. He feels a little better, but the weed isn’t that strong and he knows it won’t last. Nonetheless, he sits there for probably about an hour, listening to music and drinking what’s left of the six-pack he had swiped from the store earlier.

Looking out over the baseball field, he giggles a bit at the memory of Mickey Milkovich getting caught pissing on first base. He’d only been about ten years old, but he remembers having what he knows now to have been a pretty major crush on the kid. He knows he’s never really gotten over it, but he’s not stupid enough to down that road. It’s a road that’s bound to end up with him dead in a ditch somewhere minus his hands, feet and teeth.

Finally, he gathers his strength and finds his way home. Lip is sitting on his bed when he gets there, as he expected, and their argument is heated. Eventually though, it calms down, and a few days later, the quiet peace that was there before settles over them again.

A while later, he’s sitting behind Mandy Milkovich in class when their teacher decides to push his hard-on over the books on her desk and Ian thinks it’d be hilarious to push his bag out behind him. His asshole teacher topples backward and the entire class bursts out laughing while Ian giggles to himself quietly.

What he doesn’t bargain on is Mandy interpreting it as an invitation to grab his ass at work the next day. He does his best to kindly turn her down, but after kissing Kash goodbye after work, she appears beside him and tells him she’s going to walk him home.

Shaking her off is impossible. No matter how many times he tries to push her away, she just comes on stronger. Ian is starting to panic. He wipes the sweat beading on the back of his neck away and rubs his moist palms on his jeans. Finally, when Carl has disappeared off somewhere and Mandy is climbing onto his lap and pulling a condom from down her shirt, Ian panics and shoves her away. He tries not to do it too forcefully, but she stumbles back, her bare hip bumping hard into the edge of the coffee table and probably giving her a nasty bruise.

“Shit, Mandy, I’m so sorry-“ Ian begins, but Mandy just lets out a sob, grabs her coat and runs for the door.

Ian is so fucked. He disappears upstairs just as Fiona storms in a moment later demanding answers.

For the next few days, Ian makes sure to lie low. He goes to work straight after school, taking the back alleys on his way home and staying hidden amongst other commuters on the L just in case. Mandy does her best to ignore him; she even changes her seat in History. For a couple of days, he seems to be doing okay.

That is, until Mickey Milkovich bursts through the door of the Kash n Grab, yells his name in a way that spells murder, and Ian is sprinting to the back room and locking himself in for fear of his life. Mickey throws his body against it from the other side as soon as he slams it shut, and his breath shudders out of his throat as he hears him and his brothers yelling and shouting from the other side. There’s more yelling and pounding until Ian hears Kash give them some bullshit about him already having escaped out the back, and then he hears a few yelled expletives followed by a loud crash. Kash comes back a few moments later, and Ian breathes a sigh of relief.

Ian is getting really sick of Milkoviches at this point.

He spends the next few days trying to chase Mandy down, until one day he decides that Lip was right – it’s time to bite the bullet and take the beat-down for this. The bat is heavy in his hand and he’s gripping it so tightly he’s sure he’ll get splinters, but he carries on regardless. Then, as he’s crouched down hiding with Lip, he spots Mandy walking through the front door of her house. He corners her in the alley beside it and does his best to convince her to call her brothers off.

She yells at him until he blurts out the truth, and after a few tentative conversations, things settle between them into a warm peace. By the end of it, he has a new friend, a beard, and no longer has to fear getting beaten to death on his way home from school.

It lasts all of a week before Mickey decides to start fucking with him again.

Ian can’t understand it. Mandy’s called off her brothers, right? Why is Mickey still fucking with him? Why is he fucking with Kash now, too? Ian knows who the Milkoviches are – everyone in this neighbourhood does. Everyone knows who his dad is, and Ian knows that he’s locked up for some serious shit. If Mickey is anything like his dad, it doesn’t bode well for Ian.

But Ian doesn’t think he is. He knows that the Milkovich boys are raised to be thugs, that they’re in and out of jail like a revolving door—but having seen Frank have more than a couple of near-deadly altercations with the Milkovich patriarch, he knows that they’re mere puppies in comparison to their father. Mean, violent, terrifying puppies with sharp teeth and bloody mouths, but puppies nonetheless.

Kash doesn’t do anything about Mickey’s repeated shoplifting and it doesn’t take long for Linda to start yelling at him about it. She does everything to try and get Kash to stand up to him – even Ian tries. But Kash won’t do anything, so Ian takes things into his own hands.

He says something a little weird about ‘civic pride’ – thinking that Mickey might show a little solidarity with their shitty neighbourhood if nothing else.

Mickey turns to him with a scowl on his face and says, “You know where I live if you have a problem.”

Yeah, he does.

*

Kash invites Ian to his house when Linda’s out of town, and Ian is excited for it until he actually gets there. The smell of his house hits him like a brick to the face, and it’s a little overwhelming. He’s blindfolded, and he tries to keep the bitterness about it at bay. The night starts going from bad to worse when he sees the picture of Kash’s two kids on the nightstand, and the mannequin head with Linda’s scarf wrapped around it on the dresser. He tries to ignore it, instead focusing on Kash’s hands working the tension from his muscles, but he can’t. He can hear Lip calling him a ‘slut’ in his head, and suddenly he feels disgusted with himself and his nakedness against the scratchy blanket on the marital bed below him.

He pushes Kash away and can’t look at him at work the next morning.

*

A couple of days later, he arrives for his after-school shift and Kash has bruising all over his face and the gun has been stolen.

Frantic, he rushes to the Milkovich house and demands to see Mickey. Mandy tells him he’s downstate and Ian is livid. He tells her about Kash and the gun and Mandy tells him to leave, but Ian knows he’ll be back.

When he gets back to work, there’s a guy up a ladder fixing the security cameras and Kash is giving him a look. Linda is suspicious of him, for some reason, but Ian shakes it off and gets back to work pretty quickly.

It takes a few minutes to get an adequate blind spot, but they get it set up soon enough and they fuck against the shelves before Linda gets back. Ian feels dirty again, but he does his best to hide it.

It’s early the next morning that he returns to the Milkovich house, his eyes scanning the front yard (which, unsurprisingly, is covered in empty beer bottles and other assorted crap – Terry’s such a hardcore alcoholic that Ian would probably pay money to see him take Frank on in a drinking match) until he finds something suitably blunt and heavy. He grasps the tyre iron and he can feel the coldness of it though his gloves. Giving the front door a shove, he creeps through the eerie quiet of the house and finds his way into Mickey’s room.

The older boy is sleeping, his face buried in his pillow while he sleeps off what was probably a night of heavy drinking. Ian pokes him in the back with the tyre iron and all but yells that he wants the gun back.

Ian holds back a smirk at the grimace Mickey makes, knowing his head is probably ringing painfully. Mickey seems to submit and goes to his nightstand, but before Ian can see what he’s doing, he’s turning around and they’re fighting. Ian grunts and Mickey grunts back as they throw each other around the room. For a moment, he makes a break for the nightstand, thinking that the gun is inside, but Mickey grabs him and suddenly he’s straddling his chest and holding the tyre iron above his head, panting fiercely.

It’s hot as hell and slowly, Ian notices that he’s not the only one who feels that way. Mickey’s hard-on is pressing against his chin and he can’t help but look at the line of it through his pants. He _has_ to be going commando, doesn’t he? When he glances up, his darkened eyes are met with equally dilated ones and in a few seconds, the tyre iron is falling to the floor with a clunk and Mickey is pulling his shirt off and the clothes from Ian’s body eagerly, a filthy grin on his mouth that Ian wants to kiss off.

A few moments later and they’re both naked. Ian wraps his hand around Mickey’s cock and pumps it a few times before he lets out a punched out moan when Mickey crawls forward and sucks his dick into his mouth, his tongue laving over the head and flicking his fraenulum. “Fuck-“ He hisses, his hands burying themselves in his surprisingly soft hair. He lets him carry on for a few moments until Mickey moans breathlessly and starts mouthing his balls and it’s all a little too much. He pulls away and, licking his lip, Mickey rummages through his drawer for lube and a condom before getting on his hands and knees and hissing at Ian to hurry the fuck up.

He spends a few moments making sure the smaller boy is ready for him and then slides inside him slowly, pushing in and out a few times to the sound of the brunet grunting and groaning into his pillow. Gradually, he seems to adjust, and Ian begins thrusting in and out slowly. He tilts his head back and moans breathily, looking down at the way the older boy’s hole stretches around him and burning the image into his head.

Slowly he picks up the pace and soon he’s slamming into the older boy hard and rough, making the bed slam against the wall with dull thuds. Mickey’s hand is fisted in his sheets and his brow is crossed tightly while he bites his lip, letting out harsh grunts and moans. The other hand has disappeared beneath him, his bicep flexing beside him as he pumps himself quickly and Ian is close, so he drapes himself over his back, hooks an arm around his waist and aims sharply for his sweet spot.

Mickey lets out a sudden yelp and then buries his face into his pillow to muffle the stream of moans he lets out as Ian thrusts into him a few more times, and then he’s clenching around Ian’s cock as he comes over the sheets. Ian lets out a gasp and a soft moan as he follows soon after, his hips stuttering and jerking.

Ian revels in the feeling of their skin getting a little stuck together with sweat for a few seconds while they pant and try to catch their breaths. Mickey starts to straighten up and Ian peels his sweaty skin from his.

They’ve barely caught their breaths and slumped against the mattress when Terry trudges in, takes a piss and then, on his way out, tells them they look like 'a couple of fags'. Mickey lets out the breath he’d been holding and Ian feels like his life just flashed before his eyes.

Afterward, it’s kind of awkward. Mickey tosses the gun onto the mattress with an uncertain look and when Ian moves to kiss him, he turns away.

“Kiss me and I’ll cut your fuckin’ tongue out.”

Mandy catches him on his way out and there’s a funny smile playing on her lips when he shows her the gun tucked down his jeans.

He goes back to the store with it and is there for all of three seconds before there’s another fist in his face. Ian doesn’t think his face could really look any worse, but when he looks up, he sees that it’s Linda who hit him and it dawns on him suddenly that she’s found out about him and Kash. They argue for a few minutes and it ends with Linda demanding another baby.

It feels like a weight has just been dropped on his stomach. It’s as if he’s just now realising the reality of his relationship with Kash - and how unimportant he is and always was, how his body had been the only thing that had ever mattered here. He remembers the night he spent at their house while Linda was away and how he couldn’t stand to stay there for longer than a few minutes. He's always known that Kash has a wife and two kids, but in that moment, he sees him in the same way Linda does – as a coward, as somebody who will never really be his.

Ian slams the gun down on the counter and leaves.

*

Mickey’s words ring in Ian’s ears for days – while he jerks off that night, it’s surprisingly not all to the thought of Mickey’s hole stretching around his cock but to the rejection he’d faced afterward. Ian wonders if he’s a masochist. He doesn’t feel like giving up quite so easily.

He spends all of the next day thinking about his fuck with Mickey Milkovich, the thug with knuckle tattoos who’d break your ribs just for looking at him the wrong way. He forgets to take notes in biology and history and it’s only during his last class of the day that he remembers he’s working with Kash tonight.

It’s scary how quickly his feelings have changed. Usually he’d be looking forward to it but since Mickey… he can’t think of anything worse. Luckily though, Kash gets a text from Linda and he leaves early.

Ian is sitting at the counter remembering the way Mickey bit his lip the day before and, just as the customer is leaving, the boy himself walks through the door and says some cheesy line about slim jims and shitholes.

Ian fucks him against the crates in the back room and even gets away with running his hands up Mickey’s chest. Mickey brushes him off again right after, and Ian just grins harder.

He really is a masochist, huh.

They carry on that way, sneaking around and stealing fucks in the back room or even, on one occasion, in Mickey's bedroom when Mandy is in the other room. Ian sucks Mickey’s cock like it’s his last meal and he doesn’t think he’s ever got so turned on from blowing a guy in his life. Fuck, he smells good – a little dirty and like he hasn’t bathed in a while, but he smells fleshy, like pheromones, and a bit like the air outside. As embarrassing as it is, he most turned on not by Mickey’s breathy moans or the bitter taste of his precum, but the way his hands are buried in his hair and how his short nails dig into his scalp. Ian almost wants him to cut the skin so he can touch them later.

Just when he thought he couldn’t get any weirder, Mickey comes down his throat with a grunt and to Ian’s delight, his fingernails just break the skin. Ian swallows him down and licks his lips as he pulls away. Mickey smirks at him as he does his pants up and tells him to get lost.

Ian grins, stands, straightens himself out and goes back to Mandy, who’s given up on her homework and is now playing video games. To his surprise, Mickey comes and sits beside him, brushing his arm right up against him and stealing the controller from his hands.

He jerks off with his hand buried in his hair that night, his whole arm and thigh tingling where Mickey had sat beside him.

They continue on like that just fine, and it’s the happiest Ian’s ever been. He’s hesitant to call it love since Mickey barely even says two words to him most of the time, but he never felt like this with Kash and he feels more exhilarated than he’s ever been in his life. It reminds him of how he felt when he used to ride on the back of Fiona’s bicycle while she sped through the streets when they were kids. They fuck almost every day and Ian jerks off in the shower, or silently on his bed while he imagines Mickey doing the same thing a few streets over. Ian brushes Kash off whenever he talks to him at work, and they stop fucking altogether. Ian knows that Kash is going to start suspecting something soon, but he doesn’t really care. All he can think about is the shirt he stole from Mickey’s room yesterday while he and Mandy were studying and how he can’t wait to bury his nose in it when he jerks off tonight.

Everything comes to a screeching halt, however, when Debbie announces that Monica is back.

He can’t get out of the house quick enough.

In retrospect, he can’t remember why exactly he thought that Mickey would give a shit that his mother's just shown up after years of absence, but he’s the only person he wants to see right now and there’s an aching need in his chest that he can’t shake that makes him do this. It just doesn’t occur to him that he could scare Mickey away with this, because somehow he knows that Mickey isn’t going to bolt.

Frantic, he bangs on the door repeatedly until Mickey answers.

“What the fuck?” He snaps around a cigarette.

“I need to see you.” Ian says, panting and close to tears.

Someone shouts in the background. “ _Not_ a good time.” Mickey growls, clearly stressed out himself.

“I-I don’t know where else to go.”

Mickey looks conflicted. “I thought you were working today?”

“Linda’s gonna have my ass. I’m supposed to be there now.”

Mickey licks his lips and nods. “I’ll meet you there in twenty.”

Ian goes to the store and waits anxiously, pacing around the floor and trying not to freak out. It doesn’t take long for Mickey to show and they’re in the backroom in what feels like a split second. Mickey’s pulling at his shirt and Ian shivers in the cold, but then the older boy is dropping to his knees and taking Ian’s semi into his mouth. He goes down on him even more hungrily than he did the first time they fucked, and as Ian buries his hands in his hair, he realises that Mickey is gripping his hips just as tightly and that his hands are shaking a little bit too.

Ian pulls away and corners Mickey against the shelves behind him. The brunet pulls a condom and a sachet of lube from his pocket and hands them to him before turning around and pulling his jeans down, spreading his legs a little. In a few moments, Ian is pushing into him with a groan.

They spend ten minutes fucking against the shelves and crates and they’re so into it that they don’t hear Kash yelling triumphantly outside. Ian’s close and his face is buried into the sweaty nape of Mickey’s neck while he squeezes his eyes shut and grasps Mickey’s hand where it’s wrapped around the frame of the shelving unit tightly, feeling like he wants to merge with Mickey’s body, escaping from all this shit. It’s the best fuck of his life and he groans loudly as he feels his orgasm start to sneak up on him.

Suddenly, there’s a rush of air against his back and Kash is standing in the door looking crushed.

“What the fuck-“ Mickey grunts. He pulls his jeans up and doesn’t even stop to do them up right. He just hightails it out of there, leaving Ian standing there half-naked with Kash.

The next few minutes are weird. Kash is staring at him with a pathetic look on his face while he arranges fruit mindlessly and Ian feels like he’s being sized up by a zombie. Sighing, he goes to the back room and tries to calm down. He tries the breathing exercises he learned in karate and it seems to calm him down a little, but he still can’t face going back out there just yet. So he sits on the crate with his head in his hands and tries not to stare at the spot on the shelf where he’d touched Mickey’s hand and the older boy had let him.

He hears murmuring but figures it’s just Kash talking to a customer. That is, until he hears a gunshot.

“What the fuck…”

Making his way outside, he gets there just in time to see what happens.

“Kash, what are you doing?!” He yells, panicking. If he kills Mickey…

“It’s a fuckin’ Snickers bar!” Mickey yells, right before Kash shoots him in the leg. He whimpers and falls to the ground, his thigh bloody and painful. “Holy shit—“

Ian stares incredulously at Kash and then rushes to Mickey’s side, looking at his leg and grasping the back of his head comfortingly.

“Hey, look at me, look at me—“ He says, trying to get Mickey to stop panicking.

“You fuckin’ suck!”

Kash is apparently in the twilight zone, so Ian rushes to the back of the store to call 911. He waits until he hears sirens and then he leaves, making sure that the gun is safely out of Kash’s hands.

He tells Lip about it all, eventually, and over the next couple of days he finds out from Mandy that Mickey’s in the jail ward at county. Worried (and missing him like crazy already), he decides to visit him.

Ian can’t help but feel endeared toward him when Mickey limps up to the visiting window on crutches. As expected, Mickey’s already causing trouble, but it doesn’t stop him from saying thanks about the money Ian’s put in his commissary account.

“Not me. Kash. I told him you might still press charges.” Ian says.

Mickey gives him a funny smile that Ian burns into his memory, and then says thanks again.

It turns out that Mickey’s going away for a year, maybe more if his shitty attitude comes into play. Ian has a feeling it will and he tries to hide his disappointment.

“I miss you.” He says hesitantly.

“You say that again I’ll rip your tongue out of your head.” Mickey snaps.

Ian smiles. Mickey drops his glare and gives him another keen look that makes Ian’s insides coil, and then he makes the mistake of touching the glass.

“Take your hand off the glass.” He says, shaking his head. Apparently the moment’s over, but Ian still feels a spark of excitement. There’s a cat-and-mouse feel to their dynamic that Ian can’t get enough of, even if he makes himself look like an idiot most of the time.

Ian makes sure to put money into Mickey’s account every couple of months, just because he knows that no one else will. He pockets ten every time he gets a pay check and soon he has enough to put in thirty dollars or so every month. He doesn’t expect Mickey to notice, but if it gets him another look like the one he gave him last time, Ian’s willing to go without.

Next summer can’t come soon enough.


End file.
